


New Whispers

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Felix and Percy [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - In Hushed Whispers, Drama, Flashbacks, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gore, Implied/Referenced Torture, Magic, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Red Lyrium, The Blight (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-07-24 00:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Thrown into the epicentre of an impossible accident with volatile magic caused by his desperate, nigh on insane father, Felix Alexius finds himself branded with the Mark of the Fade that has transferred to him from the Herald of Andraste, an ex-Saarebas who named themself Person (or Percy for short) after leaving the Qun. It may be a while before he can fully process what has happened, however, as he and Dorian are pulled into an alternate future where everything is going horribly wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another take at the Inquisitor!Felix AU first covered in One Herald After the Other.
> 
> I intend to cover the In Hushed Whispers Quest in more detail from Felix's perspective. Some details mentioned in the previous fic may be subject to change as the AU is still a work in progress that I flesh out as I write.
> 
> (And yeah, since they have already been introduced at the Gull and Lantern, Felix already knows and respects Percy's pronouns!)

It is like that horrible afternoon in the Anderfels all over again. Felix even seems to get a blurry vision of the cursed wasteland where his mother died.   
  
He can see... White and orange flashes before his eyes, like the glaring life-drained sky and the scorched desert sand whirling into a chaotic vortex, up switching places with down. And perhaps for a split second, he imagines that he is back there again. Screaming for his mother again. Struggling helplessly, uselessly against the lumpy, grey, clay-like limbs of the lesser darkspawn while the most hulking monster of the pack goes for her throat.  
  
But the illusion does not last. These are just bright spots clouding his vision, nothing more. Not that what is happening to him - and more importantly, to the others - in the waking world is much better.   
  
The throne room of the Redcliffe Castle floats back into view, simple southern furniture and fluffy bear rugs and grinning dog statues and all. Felix staggers, swept off-balance by a slurping, hissing stream of magic.  
  
Unstoppable, frothing, like a jet from an enormous ghostly fountain, this arcane flow poured out of his father's shaking grasp - perhaps inadvertently; Felix prays that it happened inadvertently - as he watched hooded scouts slip out of a hidden passageway like swiftly gliding shadows of dark green, and firm, merciless hands rose to the throats of the Venatori guards that lined the throne room's perimeter, a single unbreaking ribbon of crimson, just under the chin of the forking metal mask, deciding the fate of each.  
  
  
As, one by one, the guards slumped to the floor, their complexly tailored white robes spreading around them like red-speckled rose petals, Felix received the final, crushing confirmation that the genial, courteous face that his father had worn during the 'negotiations' with the Inquisition - the face that, an eternity ago, had been who he really was - was now no more than a disguise, and what beneath it was twisted and rotten and monstrous.  
  
Looking over the room, his pupils shrinking to quivering pinpoints, the cornered magister let out a shriek of rage and, twitching and shuddering like an addict at the bottommost low of lyrium deprivation, lashed out at any agents of the Inquisition that were within his reach... And Felix, too stupefied by the pain of seeing his father... like this, has failed dodge to the side in time, having the misfortune of being caught in the crossfire.   
  
After the first disorienting splash, the fountain of magic quickly split into two separate streams. The one that has engulfed Felix is bright green, like light turned into tangible, acidic liquid; the second, black as night, is threatening to drown the Herald. That poor person who escaped the tethers of the Qun, and started making a name for themself as a hero, a bringer of order, a symbol of hope, rather than a monster that deserved to be chained heavier than a money lender's chest, and silenced by coarse stitching through the lips - only to be ambushed by Tevinter cultists.  
  
Even as the green magic begins to burn at him, a knife-sharp, shattering pain like he has been set on fire and then tossed against a pane of glass, Felix strains to focus his dimming, tearful eyes on the Herald. What is Father doing to them? What is this magic - this... this living tar? It looks almost like... like Felix's own Blighted blood.   
  
The dark tide rises and swells, and through the burning net that has been cast over him, Felix senses a familiar bump of nausea making his stomach swing in place. The haunting thought of the Anderfels returns; his gut heaving, his hands and feet turning to ice even amid the flames of green magic, Felix feels as though he is being infected by that first fateful swallow of darkspawn blood. All over again.  
  
All over again - except in reverse. Following the initial surge of nausea, during which Felix can almost taste the Taint's bitter prickle on his tongue, just like he did back then, clawing and kicking at those twisted creatures in a desperate drive to get to his mother, there comes odd, impossible, yet undeniable... Relief.   
  
The sickness fades, and the sting of green light does as well. Felix straightens up and closes his eyes to savour this unexpected bloom of vitality. He is a bit lightheaded but otherwise more... whole, more himself, than he has felt in months.   
  
All of a sudden, there is no unseen slab crushing his chest; no discomforting pulse rippling through the paper-thin skin of his cheeks, like there are slugs pushing down the narrow tubes of his veins; no string of tiny hammers, pounding his temple bones into brittle dust. And - against all the cruel truths he has taught himself to accept - there is no wordless song slithering through the back of his mind.   
  
He has come to treat that song as his constant companion, his tiny personal demon, always whispering something to him, promising that one day, the whisper would turn into a rhythmic, tide-like roar, and then he would know it is finally time.  
  
It would sometimes get dulled by Father's elaborately formulated powders, but never truly went silent... Until now.  
  
The song has ended. The sickness is no more. Could it be... Could it be that Father has, at long last, succeeded where he failed so many times before? That Felix was wrong to tell him this was hopeless, to insist that he shouldn't waste so much strength and ardour and time - oh, how much Father lamented not having enough time - on a lost cause?  
  
No. His was a lost cause. Truly. With no room for doubt or hope. If there is one thing Felix still remembers from his... interrupted course at the University of Orlais, it's that a scientist must believe nothing but the cold hard facts. And the facts are that there is no cure for the Blight. Not through... conventional means.  
  
Maker! That's what this dark river meant! Father has decided to 'destroy' the Herald by magically transferring Felix's Blight to them!   
  
It's insane that the plan has worked - but it clearly has. Maybe because the Veil in Redliffe is supposedly naturally thin, and Father has been wearing it through even further, twisting it like a towel to squeeze out every last drop of energy to fuel his blasted time magic... Damn it; damn the man; Felix never asked for this! The Herald's blood (the blood of all of Thedas if the Elder One succeeds) will be on them both!  
  
With his eyes now wide open, Felix nevertheless stumbles across the throne room almost blindly, reaching for the Herald like he once reached for his mother, dazed by horror and racked by a noiseless sob... And blunders right into the firm, steady embrace of their... kind of excitingly muscular arms (he shouldn't really be thinking that, considering their people's mutual history; he is probably falling prey to that nasty 'sexy savage' imagery that is found in a lot of Tevene and Orlesian books with Qunari characters).  
  
'I am all right,' the Herald booms, gazing down upon Felix from their gigantic height with amusement mixed in with gratitude. Felix could be imagining this, because he is flushing hotter than a fire orb himself (and it has nothing to do with magic this time), but it appears as though the Herald is... blushing.  
  
'That stuff did not touch me; Grand Enchanter Fiona jumped in front of me'.  
  
It is true: Felix has just now spotted the leader of the southern mages. The thought of her, leaping in to shield the Herald from the encroaching stream of hungry magical tar, sends a shiver up his spine. The Herald is safe - but Fiona sacrificing her life to the Taint is not acceptable either. None of what his father has been doing lately is acceptable.  
  
It does not take that long for the shiver to subside, however. Fiona looks exactly the same; her skin is still healthily brown, her green eyes still clear and sharp.  
  
'How... How are you feeling, Enchanter?' Felix asks just in case, his voice lowered and slightly tremulous as he tentatively probes for the right words.  
  
'I don't mean to alarm you, but that spell... May have been a manifestation of the Blight'.  
  
'The Blight? Curious,' Fiona echoes, evidently fascinated, and rather concerned, but - to Felix's utter astonishment - not the least bit frightened for her life.  
  
'Is this some special power granted to the followers of the Elder One? I hope we can find a way to counter it... But in either case, I would have been unaffected. It's a... long story, but I was a Warden once, and... something that happened to me made me immune to the effects of darkspawn blood'.  
  
Felix's jaw drops so low that almost clips through into another plane of existence. So much for hard facts!   
  
He would have loved to bombard Fiona with questions about what exactly that 'something' was - not for his sake; he is not important; but for the sake of the other families that the darkspawn may yet tear apart like his - but the Herald cuts in at this point, drawing back from Felix and casting a long look of blank disbelief at his hands, their pale lilac eyes round as glass marbles.  
  
'Well, uh, Fiona may have been unaffected...' they squeeze out of their throat, their voice jumping up an octave in mid-sentence. 'But you certainly have been'.  
  
Blinking, Felix mirrors the tilt of the Herald's head, to inspect whatever it is that has shaken them so much. And just as he does that, the piercing pain that came with the green light flares anew - though this time, its spark is much weaker, simmers down sooner, and seems to be concentrated in... In the upturned palm of his left hand. Which is now sliced across by a bold, broad line, deep as a knife cut, but much more... ethereal than a mere flesh wound, swirling with the same arcane energy that stung so viciously at Felix before his Blight ebbed from him.  
  
'Whoah, that's a lot to take in... I was just getting used to being all green and glowy... I guess the Magister wanted us to swap places, huh,' the Herald says, clearing their throat. 'S'pose if someone has to carry this... thing, the Elder One would like it better if it was a Venatori's son'.  
  
'What?! No!' a shrill, bowstring-tense voice screams somewhere behind their backs.   
  
Felix's heart falls - again, like it has so many times before, ever since the bloody Venatori showed up on their doorstep, like grotesquely dressed peddlers of 'old Tevinter glory'. Unable to think about anything else but his father, he turns his head and abruptly becomes aware that, all this time, the stares of the entire throne room have been on him.   
  
The cowering southern mages have straightened up, eyes like white porcelain saucers; the Inquisition agents have baited their breath, weapons still raised; the stern-faced, scarred Nevarran woman, who is part of the Herald's entourage together with the apparently Rivaini mage in courtly Orlesian attire, has rested her hand on her armoured chest, muttering something about Andraste's boon being defiled... Even Dorian seems to have lost composure, hand clapped against his forehead, gaze travelling rapidly from Felix to the Herald and back again.   
  
And Felix's father, haggardly pale, with crescents of sweat waxing across his robes and at least three Inquisition swords pointed at his back, is still shaking. Still struggling. Still scrambling to explain himself.  
  
'I didn't want this! I didn't plan this! I just... I just thought... thought about... how unfair it all was... My boy, dying... And this... Damned oxman interloper meddling... with... with...'  
  
'Ox person,' the Herald corrects him brashly. 'And even with the Mark gone, I will continue to meddle, just so you know'.   
  
They rest their large warm hand on Felix's shoulder, and, for some reason, the pang of worry and shame for his father instantly releases his heart. Maybe this way there will be enough room for other emotions. Like the urge to scream at the alien slash across his palm.  
  
'No matter what the Venatori try to do with Felix: conscript him, or...' the Herald goes on resolutely - but is interrupted.  
  
'Kill him!' Father chokes, balling his fists. 'They will kill him! The Mark was stolen from the Elder One; it cannot be allowed to exist in anyone's hand but his!'   
  
'Oh, and now what? You let your precious cult consume your own son? Or is he the exception, and your villainy threatens only expendable southerners?' Dorian sneers derisively, taking a broad, menacing step towards his one-time mentor... his one-time friend.   
  
It's too much for Felix, seeing so much loathing in the eyes of two men who once smiled and joked over drinks, or emerged dishevelled side by side from the arcane laboratory, hair and clothing singed by mage fire, finishing each other's sentences as they gushed over their latest breakthrough while shoving food into their mouths (which Dorian at least tried to do gracefully, of course). Gently shaking the Herald off his shoulder, he also moves closer to his father, while the throne room falls silent, each person's intakes of breath pained and snail-slow, as if time has begun to freeze.  
  
'I... I have to reverse this! I have to go through with the plan!' Father pants. 'The Elder One... must prevail! I need... to make certain he does...'  
  
The Inquisition soldiers behind him draw themselves up, ready to strike - but, in a jerking motion, he snaps the metal talons that adorn the fingers of his Venatori gauntlets, and knocks them (and the nearby Nevarran) back with a magical force push that seems to momentarily turn the air into molten glass.  
  
With the warriors nearest to him incapacitated, he reaches for the cubic green amulet around his neck. The little cube whirrs with magic, vibrating slightly and rising into the air before Father's face. Its clasp clicks loose, and the next moment, it is already suspended in mid-air, bleeding a scorching green glow.  
  
'Oh no you don't, you fucking madman!' Dorian cries out, lunging forward and knocking his former mentor back with a strike of a mage staff across the stomach.  
  
Still suspended, the amulet careens to the side; the tendrils of glow flop over Felix and Dorian's heads like the stingers of a jellyfish, coiling at a sickening speed into a spiral vortex, which seems to suck the air into it, pulling both of them closer and closer and closer... Till they fall in, head-first, and the world goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sentence 'Either way, the buzz is not what really matters here. The bodies are' is followed by the descriptions of red lyrium victims, which may seem rather graphic to some readers. If you do not wish to read further, the chapter ends with Dorian and Felix hearing Fiona’s voice.

And once more, a splash. And green, lots and lots of green (Maker, Felix feels that he will soon come to hate the colour). Only now, it is all quite literal: after their somersault into nothingness, they have landed in water. A whole pool of it, about calf-deep, heavily stagnant, with a kind of oily, cloying texture and a concentrated odour, like the whiff that comes from cloth than has gotten soaked in the rain and then left without a proper wash (Felix still remember the housekeeper at his Orlesian apartment chastising him for just tossing his cloak off after racing through the freezing, hazy grey downpour outside, instead of handing it over to her to clean) - multiplied tenfold.   
  
All right, those random reminiscences were far too vivid again. Even though they are far more pleasant than the mound of snarling darkspawn faces crowding before his eyes (his student years were a simpler, more innocent time), they are still a distraction. He needs to focus on where in the Void this new wretched magic has spat them out, and maybe come up with a plan.   
  
First things first. Groaning a bit to himself as his ribs are quite sore from the fall - though with the song silent, it is probably a boon that this, along with the clammy feeling of his drenched clothes clinging on to his body, is his only source of discomfort - Felix gets to his feet and squints around, water sloshing in his boots as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.  
  
The pool is indoors, that much is obvious; flooding the floor of some manner of... dungeon, it is being fed further by the murky streams that trail incessantly down the slightly pockmarked mason work of the thick stone walls. And everything - everything - is cast in that same green light. Fade-green, like the... the Mark. Andraste's tears, he almost forgot about the Mark. His price for being cleansed of the Blight.  
  
Slowly, choppily, like he is moving in a dream, Felix lifts his hand and gapes upon it, mesmerized by the shimmering dance of his new glowing scar, which at times seems to reflect the expansion and contraction of the shadows that glide through the dungeon, making the endless shades of green deepen in places into blots of fir-shaded ink.  
  
'This... This can't be real...' he mutters weakly, mechanically flexing his fingers. 'How could the Mark... have jumped to me so easily? What am I to do with it? How... am I to...'  
  
'I expect you are to follow in our admirable grey friend's footsteps,' Dorian's voice responds, echoing oddly, from what Felix, in his confused state, almost mistakes for a different level of the dungeon, storeys and storeys away. It takes him quite a few shakes of his head and rapid blinks to realize that Dorian is actually in front of him,  his lips curled into a seemingly carefree, assured smile but his eyes darkened with concern.  
  
'Just wave your hand at any Fade Rifts and revel in your own majesty as they close. There's nothing to it, from what I've seen. But for now, we have to find our bearings, hmm? If you are feeling all right'.  
  
'I... I think I am...' Felix says numbly, still twiddling his fingers in front of his face, without truly feeling them. 'Or... Or I will be... Will have to be... For all our sakes...'  
  
He tilts his head up, tearing his eyes away from the green dance, and attempts to mirror Dorian's smile.  
  
'I will leave tearing my hair out in desperation to a time when I grow it longer. Right now we... we need a plan...' he says, giving voice to his recent thoughts.  
  
'That's the spirit - and I bet that at least some of your hair-tearing will be over it being nowhere near as stylish as my glorious hairdo,' Dorian chuckles, snapping his fingers to summon a little wisp of gentle glow, round and golden like a drop of honey.   
  
And just like honey, it trickles and stretches, thinning in the middle until it splits into two wisps, one of each of them. With a faint hum, these drops of magic flit up and down over their chests, swerve to the side to tickle their arms, and then slip behind their back; and in their wake, a subtle warmth spreads, drying up their wet, soiled robes.   
  
As Felix's wisp lingers near his collar, illuminating his (probably comically clueless) face, Dorian's throat contracts, and his eyes mist over with a moist film, which sparkles with a dozen of specks of reflected golden light. At least, from what Felix can make out: the next thing he knows, the same happens to his own eyes.   
  
Oh, Dorian; dear, dear Dorian. He can always rely on his witty remarks to anchor him in place when he is about to turn into a messy nervous wreck. For those are the relics of the cherished, bygone, sunbathed evenings when both of then were barely out of their teens, and the most horrifying threat they had to face was Felix being grounded for stealing from the pantry to feed Dorian snacks while he was studying. And before Felix blinks off the tears, Dorian's smudged features almost look like they did back then, in a world that seemed just as young as they themselves. Maker, they could have had such a wonderful friendship had the Blight not intervened; but perhaps now... Now Felix has been given a chance to catch up?  
  
'It is frightfully selfish, and probably morally wrong, given what magic wrought this,' Dorian - a grown, 'spectacularly' moustached man again - confesses quietly (and Felix cannot help but clasp his hand and squeeze it in appreciation; he knows how much Dorian detests confessions, and what great exertion this must be for him).   
  
'But I am glad you are no longer sick'.   
  
Dorian coughs multiple times, as if gulping down smoke, and then, after Felix lets go of him, presses his fingers together and passes his hand in a blade-like motion, extinguishing the wisps. Because they are both dry and cozy now (well, as cozy as they can get, with their noses assaulted by that dank smell); and because, when the veil of green falls over them again, it is harder to see his face.  
  
'This may yet play out in our favour,' he adds, turning around towards a gaping black rectangle that has to be the dungeon's exit and motioning Felix to follow. 'You being the new Herald, Adaar being alive and well... If we only send the Venatori home...'  
  
That, apparently, will take a lot of effort. Because hardly does Dorian finish speaking, when three or four figures in the telltale white garments and fork-crowned face masks, armed with short broad spears shaped like sharpened metal palm leaves, burst in through the doorway, blocking their path.  
  
'Glory to the Elder One!' screams the figure at the head of the little procession, thrusting its spear forward to try and puncture Dorian's chest.  
  
'Rude,' Dorian says, almost through a yawn, one eyebrow cocked in a mildly bemused expression. Felix guesses that he is putting up this little performance to show how playfully easy it is for him to first knit a tight, thrumming, fuzzy white ball out of the fine threads of lightning that have broken through the flesh of his palm, and then, like a spider wielding its web, toss it into the masked faces of the spearmen.  
  
Upon hitting the first one - the one that invoked the Elder One's name, with the breathless reverence of singing praise to a deity - the ball instantly melts their mask into a shapeless, featureless chunk of goo, which emits a wispy curling stream of light grey smoke, together with a sharp tang of smell: metal mixed in with scorched flesh.  
  
After this Venatori falls, the ball zooms away from the silent, singed ragdoll that they have turned into, and sprouts four long zigzagging rays, hair-thin and positioned in symmetrical pairs, like limbs of a monstrous stick figure. In far less time than it takes to describe the sight, the lightning limbs lash, with the flesh-splitting strength of so many whips, at the remaining figures, sending them into flopping convulsions (which are only intensified by their spears acting as conduits).  
  
When no Venatori are left standing, Dorian waits for a few moments for the smoke streaming from their carcasses to dissipate, and then bends down and snatches one of the spears from its owner's deep-fried hand (which falls apart into coal-like chunks at his tugging motion).  
  
'Wherever it is your old man sent us,' he points out, passing the weapon to Felix, 'The place seems to be under Venatori control. So you will need to rely on more than just my brilliant magic to protect yourself. I think...' he falters, throat contracting, but forces himself to go on. 'I think your... parents once mentioned that you took fencing lessons?'  
  
'Briefly,' Felix mumbles in a small voice as he rotates the spear uncertainly in his hands. 'When I was a teenager'.  
  
Dorian gives him a smile again.  
  
'You will get the gist of it, I am certain; same as with the Mark. Just pretend you are a barbarian, whack them, and...'  
  
The spark of friendly teasing vanishes from his eyes, and he smothers his own sentence with a choking curse - which Felix repeats after him under his breath.  
  
While exchanging banter about fencing and whatnot, they have already walked a few paces into the corridor that lies beyond the doorway. And the spectacle that has unfolded before them belongs right in Felix's Taint-induced fever dreams.  
  
Outside the little enclosed space where Father's magic threw them, the walls are also dripping. Only instead of murky, marshy green, the streaks of glinting moisture are tinted the ruby shade of congealing blood. Because as far as eye can see - until the other end of the corridor vanishes from view, like a charcoal drawing smudged by a careless elbow - there are polished, vividly crimson crystalline spikes protruding in all directions, having apparently bored crumbling black cracks in the walls, floor, and ceiling. Each of them is swathed in gauzy, many-layered rolls of crimson luminescence, which, like the shadows in the dungeon, expand and contract at a heavy, weary cadence, while the air around the crystals bubbles with scalding heat.  
  
'Fasts vaas!' Dorian swears again, striding further and further towards that smudged, faraway charcoal blob, and measuring the spike clusters with a darting, agitated gaze. 'What are these things?! Their energy... It feels a bit like lyrium - but... wrong'.  
  
He might have gone on to say something more - but his voice fades out to a muffled background noise, as Felix chances to glance past Dorian's shoulder... And suddenly finds himself completely stupefied by the discovery that the black cracks are not the only source the crystals are coming from.   
  
Here and there along the corridor, there are prison cells; narrow as upright sarcophagi, with black grates of thick metal bars in place of doors. And through the lattice of those grates, crimson beams come bursting out, carrying that same stifling heat with them, and also a sort of... low buzz, which does sound a little bit like what Felix knows of lyrium... Though admittedly, he has not come into contact with it all that much; not since his grandfather, enraged by his very limited capacity for magic, almost poisoned him by trying to force about a gallon of that blindingly blue, tingling liquid down his throat (that was shortly before the... assassins started coming).  
  
Either way, the buzz is not what really matters here. The bodies are.  
  
Scarcely after catching a glimpse of the first cell, Felix feels compelled to stumble away from Dorian, gaping through more and more bars, his heart feeling flat against the bottom of his stomach. There are so many... bodies. Curled up on the cells' floor or kneeling before the unbreakable, indifferent lattice, with skeletal fingers clasped tight over the metal even in death; mostly in ones, a blood-stopping picture of final solitude, but occasionally in twos and threes, bundles of limbs entwined together, a fleeting, faltering mortal comfort in the face of impeding doom.  
  
Lingering in front of them is torture - as though his innards are skewered repeatedly by an invisible spear, broad and barbed like the one Felix is still grasping at senselessly with his sweating hand. But he has to beat down the pain; he has to stand firm, free hand resting on the moist, filthy metal - to observe. To draw to conclusions. To deduce the cold hard facts. To be a scientist.  
  
The remains of the poor prisoners are all in varying stages of decay, but invariably have one gruesome trait in common. The red... let's call it lyrium, for want of another word, is growing out of their flesh, like fungi would grow out of stale bread.   
  
The scant patches of ashen skin, which cling on in places to the bodies of those who passed away more recently, are covered in monstrously swollen veins, like Felix's skin was, not so very long ago; the one difference is that these veins are red, not black, and sometimes bulge out far enough for crystalline ridges to form on top of them. Clutches of smaller crystals also adorn the gaunt, blade-sharp cheekbones of certain dead prisoners, and draw circles along their sunken sockets, like exaggerated outbreaks of acne.  
  
The older cadavers, in turn, are almost completely dissolved amid the pulsing, humming red mass, and it is only through a lot of squinting that Felix manages to discern the schematic outlines of humanoid figures (no more detailed than the chalk silhouettes traced by guardsmen in Tethras novels on the crime scene floor) in the patterns of red lyrium growth.  
  
'D... Dorian...' Felix mouths, tugging his companion blindly by the sleeve, not even certain if he has already noticed all these horrors by himself.  
  
'I... I think... These crystals come from... people...'  
  
'That's right,' a voice that is definitely not Dorian's speaks up out of nowhere, sounding unnaturally warped, artificial even.  
  
'The Venatori... feed the crystals to their prisoners... To... saturate them, I guess... For weaponry and such... The... things... grow inside you, tearing you apart until you die... And then they mine your corpse for more'.


	3. Chapter 3

A bit of frantic whipping about, bumping into one another as neither is watching where he is turning - and Felix and Dorian locate the source of the warped voice. It seems to belong to... Grand Enchanter Fiona. The only prisoner in this dismal place that is still alive... If you could truly apply the word to what she is going through: reduced to little more than a face and a pair of hands that twitch weakly in the air, while the rest is submerged into a kind of... monstrous solidified red jelly, with warped contours of grimy rags (what is left of a once brightly dyed, well-kempt turquoise robe) peeking through the many crystalline facets.  
  
'Fiona?! What did they do to you?! To the others?! How did they manage?! We only just left you!'   
  
His composure teetering off-balance, Dorian blurts out a series of flabbergasted questions (at least he can still speak; Felix fears that if he were to open his mouth, he would have brought on another, much more unseemly, burst of tears). But then, he cuts his own ramblings short, takes a deep breath to calm himself down, and announces, almost cheerfully,  
  
'Ah. I see. I see! I thought the question we had to answer was "Where are we?" - but it's really "When are we?", isn't it? Alexius did wave his amulet... our amulet in our faces, after all. In that case... Enchanter, could you kindly tell us the date? It's very important'.  
  
'Such things stopped being important long ago,' Fiona tries to shake her crystal-lodged head, her eyelids drooping wearily. 'But I think it... ought to be... Harvestmere. Nine forty-two Dragon'.  
  
Nine forty-two. Nine forty-two?! So they have been propelled through time an entire year ahead! And in the meanwhile, the Venatori must have brought reenforcements! Turned the odds in their favour! And... brought to fruition whatever vile plan they had. Was there truly no-one who could oppose them? No-one who could keep fighting?  
  
'What of... the Herald?' Felix asks, scarcely hearing the sound of his own voice. He... He had tried so hard to aid the Herald; to protect them from Father's madness... Was it all in vain?  
  
'Captured,' Fiona says, a grim finality in her crystalline voice. 'Just like the rest of us. I think... their cell block... is... up the stairs'.  
  
It is very unworthy of him to rush off like this, while Dorian is still asking questions to Fiona, with nothing but a breathless 'I am sorry!' to acknowledge her torment. And he will probably hate himself once he stops and processes his behaviour. But right now, his legs are already carrying him up a small flight of stairs, made slippery with moisture like well-used soap bars, and into another corridor, lined with another row of cells that house another horrifying collection of corrupted human remains... And one living Qunari, who is crammed into their lattice-gated nook with barely an inch of space to stretch their limbs.  
  
Though not as far-gone as Fiona, they have still been changed so drastically that Felix almost has to double over, under the impact of another flesh-ripping thrust of the invisible spear in his heart.   
  
The Qunari dark-grey has almost been bleached off their sallow, sweat-filmed skin; the only spots of colour that remain are the purple-black bruises around their eyes, and the vaguely lightning-shaped wisps of red light that bleed out of the corners of their eyes, from underneath their fingernails, and even out of their mouth, as they half-drunkenly tilt their head to the side and begin to speak.  
  
'Oh, hello again,' they say to Felix, their chuckle coming out like the scrape of nails against metal.  
  
'You know... For someone whom I met twice... for a total of... some... thirty minutes... You make an appearance in my hal... hallucinations... awfully often... Not that I mind seeing your... cute little face... But I know you are a demon... Viv...  Vivienne... she's in a cell nearby... We talk sometimes across... the corridor... She... tau... taught me how to resist... the likes of you... More than... the Arvaraad... ever did...'  
  
Still pushed by the same half-insane momentum that brought him here, Felix squeezes his hand through the bars and laces his fingers through the Herald's, his cheeks burning for some reason (he thinks the sensation began when they called him cute).  
  
'Herald, please listen; please believe me,' he implores them earnestly, his voice more firm than he thought it would be.  
  
'I am not a hallucination. It's really me. Felix. Dorian and I have travelled through time, skipping a whole year. But we are here now, and we will do all we can to help you and the others get out of here. Fight the Venatori'.  
  
'Awww you sweetheart,' the Herald chuckles again. Each of their low, laboured 'Ha', 'Ha', 'Ha' is punctuated by a grinding rasp.  
  
'Whoever... whatever you are, you really do sound... like you missed an entire year. The Venatori... rule the world now. Their... Elder One... has... uh... how do they call it... ascended... Had that Celene lady killed... Raised a whopping... howling... screeching..  demon army... to burn and chomp down everything... in its way... Not to mention... these bloody crystals cropping up everywhere... Growing on you like... freaky mineral parasites... Driving you mad with their... stupid song...'  
  
Felix presses down at the Herald's fingers so hard that, somewhere at the back of his head, he fears he might break them (at least this ought to be convincing enough proof that he is flesh and blood... Probably).  
  
Maker, as if this world could not be more of a waking nightmare. Empress Celene, the leader of one of Thedas' most prominent nations, dead; Orlais, and with it likely the whole south, devoured by chaos; a legion of demons, ravaging the land... Even the most blind, most indoctrinated Venatori could not have wanted this; even his father, desperately as he latched onto their promise of 'a golden new dawn for Tevinter', could not have wanted this. Could - could he?  
  
His throat so tight and raw that he might as well have swallowed a handful of red lyrium shards himself, Felix swallows and rips his suddenly parched lips apart to ask a question that he, thus far, has not dared as much as think of... But Dorian beats him to it.  
  
'I say - Herald!' he calls out urgently, racing up the same steps that Felix has followed here. 'Do you happen to know if Magister Alexius yet lives? I tried asking Fiona, but she was barely coherent in the end. Started whispering some elven lullaby, I think... I left the poor soul be.'  
  
The Herald knits their eyebrows in thought, lips twitching in the smallest ghost of a smile as they briefly glance down at Felix's hand on theirs.  
  
'The Magister... Yes, I s'pose... the guards mention him... from time to time... The Spy... master could know more... though... She was... taken away... on his special orders...'  
  
Felix slips his hand back, his whole body ringing with a despondent hollowness. Father is giving orders to the Venatori? So he hasn't abandoned this cursed 'cause'... maybe even rose up in the ranks... Oh why, Father, why? If you had just listened; if you had just gone home!  
  
'Well, that's a start,' Dorian says, nearly startling a drifting, vacant-eyed Felix into a heart attack. 'I was thinking we could check if he still has the time-controlling amulet on him... Then, ask him - nicely, or not so nicely - to use it again. Bring us back to the point when that portal of his opened. Make it like none of this had ever happened'.  
  
While talking, he has also been concentrating on guiding a charge of whispering silvery-white ice magic through the keyhole of the Herald's cell door. At its touch, which spreads feathery curls of glinting rime, the dark metal grows pale and brittle like a biscuit; so all it takes is a light, cat-like swat of Dorian's hand for the once formidable lock to crumble apart into sugary dust.  
  
The door swings open, and the Herald - petrified at first, but slowly collecting their senses as Dorian makes a series of flourishing arm twirls, as though directing a lady to her box at the opera - bends their weakened, half-asleep limbs awkwardly a few times and waddles out into the corridor.  
  
'You can... You can really do that? Erase this blighted mess? The amulet really does... work... this way?' they ask, their glow-bleeding eyes open wide. Even speaking appears to come to them easier now, in their agitation.  
  
'It might work,' Dorian shrugs, with more of that deliberately feigned nonchalance. 'Or it might also turn us into paste. We'll never know until we try, will we?'  
  
'You know what,' says the Herald, spreading their shoulders (still so wonderfully broad, even after all the languishing in a prison cell). 'I can't vouch for your not being demons - but trying to rewrite this mess, even in a crazy lyrium dream, beats sitting around on my arse. Vivienne will... soooo kill me for this, though'.  
  
But as it turns out, she doesn't kill them, after all.   
  
Just as the Herald mentioned in their feverish ramblings, their newly formed trio finds the Imperial Enchanter's cell on the opposite side of the block. She sits inside with her back straight as a rod, her red-crusted (but still flawlessly manicured) hands resting on her knees, and her bruised eyes closed. There is a shifting, effervescent turquoise cloak of a protective aura wrapped over her rigid shoulders (possibly the entirety of the magic she can muster, without her staff and fearful of attracting demons). When she fears approaching footfalls, however, the cloak shoots up tall jets of acid-tinted flame; and the same flame dances within her eyes as she throws them open.  
  
'I may be bound and corrupted, darlings,' she sneers venomously, scrutinizing the two Tevinters and the freed Herald with equal suspicion. 'But my mind is still my own. I will not let some insane manifestations of the Fade confuse me'.  
  
'We are not manifestations,' Dorian quips back at her, already busying himself with a new ice spell. 'Just displaced in the space time continuum. As it happens when volatile theoretical magic is hastily applied in practice'.  
  
The turquoise fire simmers down, and Vivienne quirks an eyebrow in derisive disapproval.  
  
'Oh, so that's what happened to you?' she asks, rising to her feet and boring her gaze solely into Felix.  
  
'I was wondering if, perhaps, your father had tucked you off into some hidden, secluded pocket of the Fade. To protect you from the horrors to come - or to seal away the Mark'.  
  
'To seal?..' Felix repeats after her, numb-tongued, acutely aware of his glowing scar again. Her tone does not bode well; not well at all - and what she says next sends the stone dungeon floor wobbling like soft, springy moss under Felix's feet.  
  
'Well, you see, my dear...' Vivienne explains, once her lock bursts apart and she is able to step outside.  
  
'With no-one left to wield the Mark and contain the onslaught of the Fade, the Breach kept growing till it completely swallowed the sky. Or so I hear. I have not  seen much beyond the confines of this dismal place for months'.  
  
'I've heard the same,' the Herald confirms, sounding sheepish through the clamour of crystals inside their throat and chest. 'I just... Tried not to mention it in case you got upset'.  
  
Upset is putting it mildly. The whole dungeon could have collapsed on top of him in a squashing pile of rubble, and Felix still would have felt less small and gnat-like and utterly destroyed. The collapse of Orlais, even the demon invasion - it cannot compare to a disaster like the swelling of the Breach. And it's all his fault.   
  
It was for his sake that Father agreed to lend the Venatori his magic, and it is his hand that now bears the Mark... which he took from the Herald, the true Herald, the actual competent hero, and then carried off into the depths of time when the people of Thedas so sorely needed it!   
  
Maker, why hadn't he died?! Why hadn't he succumbed to the Blight when he had the chance?! Mother would have had company, Father would have had no choice but to move on, and the world could still been whole!  
  
'Felix,' a moustached, Dotian-shaped blur pleads with him, while another blur, large and protective (a blur that feels like... home, even despite its red aura), keeps him steady on his feet.  
  
'Pull yourself together! We are going to fix this!'  
  
'You... Didn't get your sickness back, did you?' the grey blur asks anxiously.  
  
'No, I...' Felix wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. 'I just... Keep getting weepy'.  
  
'Tears are of little help at this point,'  Vivienne cuts him off. 'What we need is action. Assuming that you are who you say you are, was your pledge to fix this a figure of speech or...'  
  
'No, far from it,' says Dorian, a hint of animosity in his voice as he looks from the Imperial Enchanter to a still runny-nosed, blotchy-eyed Felix and back again. 'We will attempt to rewind time to the negotiations in Redcliffe, once we reach Alexius. Fiona said the Spymaster might know more?'  
  
'Ah, Leliana,' Vivienne nods gravely. 'You will find her in the torture chamber'.


	4. Chapter 4

Imperial Enchanter Vivienne glides across the floor with dignified, swan-like grace, heading assuredly for... wherever the torture chamber is (she, for one, seems to be certain which way to go, and Felix prefers not to guess what had to be done to her to make her memorize the route so well). Her fluid gait is not broken up by a single, tiniest hint at limping, even though Felix can make out branching patterns of red lyrium crystals jutting through her clothes at the back of her left calf, more or less along the vein contours.   
  
And it is only after their little group diligently files out of the cell block with Vivienne in the lead, almost like school children following their chaperone on a (very, very macabre) excursion, that it begins to dawn on Felix that, while he and Dorian have been carried forth in time, the location has remained the same. It is only then that he realizes that they are still in Radcliffe Castle.   
  
With every new turn that he takes, scrambling to keep up with the others and ordering his eyes sternly to stay dry for once; with every new side passage and stairwell that opens before him, flooded in either red or green light, or sometimes both, and rife with slinking charcoal shadows at the unlit farther end (the shadows squirm in a heart-gripping, sickening way, like they are alive... and perhaps they truly are), Felix mentally places together the castle's familiar layout.   
  
He did, after all, explore the back corridors a little bit, while trying to figure out how best to sneak off for a meeting with Dorian and the Herald; and also while paying covert visits to the southern mages, a lot of whom, especially the children, were terrified out of their wits by the sudden emergence of a real, live Tevinter magister, who almost literally stepped out of a cloud of venom-green smoke and announced that all of the rebels were now indentured to his superiors in the Imperium (and who, although he proclaimed to be the southerners' 'protector', really, really did not look the part, as Felix told him multiple times).   
  
Maker, he must not... Must not think of what might have happened in this nightmarish future to that round little boy with scarcely a gap on his face in between all the freckles, and flaming ears almost perpendicular to his head, whom Felix taught some simple puzzles to calm his tensely coiled nerves. Or to that bright-eyed girl, probably Rivaini, with two round springy hair buns on top of her head - the one that wanted to learn at least a bit of Tevene so that she might understand what the 'masked people' were talking about. Or to that bony young elf, all sharp angles and translucent skin, with whom Felix shared his meals (and would have kept sharing, even if the Blight had no curbed his appetite). Felix remembers that he had to pass the extra helpings to her through Fiona, because the poor child was convinced that any food coming from the hands of 'ma-gee-stars' was laced with 'blood magic' and would make her lose her mind, forget who she is, and turn into a slave. And, most horribly of all, she was not that far from the truth, Maker bless her.   
  
He must not think of what might have happened to any of these little ones. Because they will fix this, he and Dorian. They will have to fix this.  
  
Pieces by piece, room by room, Felix gets flashes of recognizing the castle, like assembling a jigsaw. But between the puzzle pieces, there are yawning dark gaps, which make the contrast between Redcliffe as Felix still very vividly remembers it, and Redcliffe one missed year later, all the more devastating.   
  
The living quarters, where Felix still instinctively hears the steady bustle of feet hurrying, dogs barking, and voices clamouring in vivacious chatter, now stand empty. Their doors, thrown wide open (if not torn clean off the hinges or punctured like paper sheets by some dreadfully powerful, shattering blow), reveal mangled carcasses of overturned furniture and disturbing patterns splashed over the floor and walls in what looks like gushes of blood: overlacing circles and hypnotic swirls and trailing lines in what appears to be old Tevene, cut off with no beginning or end. In some chambers and corridors, the floor and ceiling have caved in, and then haphazardly been replaced by flat sheets of metal grating, which heave underfoot like flimsy rope bridges, and keep vibrating with a head-splitting rattle even some time after the little group reaches solid ground again.    
  
Now and then, the noise alerts the Venatori, who pour out in handfuls over the grate, made to look like flapping, very hostile fish by the reflections of the poor red-and-green light on their white hoods and metal adornments. And like fish, they are inevitably fried to a crisp by Dorian (sometimes aided by the Herald and Vivienne, if they have the time to scrape together enough of their diminished magical reserves for a burst of pure-orange conjured flame). Like fish, they - once all life is burned out of them - go plop-plop-plop down into more of that stagnant, oily water, which can be heard lapping deep beneath the grate, probably mixed in with the refuse coming from whatever living beings that still cling on to this husk of a world.  
  
It's childish, and insulting, and cruel too, to think of the Venatori this way - who knows how many of them, like Father, were decent people once - but if Felix stops comparing them to fish, or to other similarly non-threatening thing, he worries that he might freeze up, and throw down his useless spear, and let the shrieking, salivating, jaw-snapping darkspawn apparitions irrevocably claim his mind. He may no longer be running a fever, since his blood is no longer boiling with the Blight - but the recovery from witnessing his mother's death is not yet complete. Perhaps never will be.  
  
After a couple of such 'fishing trips' Vivienne and the Herald are able to aside drag a few of the bodies that have not slipped off the grate (with some assistance from Dorian, who loops see-through, sea-green ropes of telekinetic energy around the dead Venatori's wrists and ankles) and salvage some scraps of gear that have only been slightly charred around the edges. Belts (one even with a potion pocket still intact); pauldrons and arm braces; and forked mage staves with a design matching Felix's spear. Not much, but at least they are not entirely unarmed anf unprepared when they finally approach the mouth of a passageway that ends a tightly shut, iron-enforced narrow wooden door, with a long, crusty red rivulet snaking out from underneath it.  
  
Vivienne halts, pointing her staff forward, and opens her mouth to speak - but she does not even need to comment that this is the torture chamber, because at this very moment, a loud whip snap rings out from the other side, and a muffled voice grunts in pain under the blow.  
  
'That doesn't sound like Leliana,' the Herald whispers, their folded triangular ears perking up.  
  
Vivienne frowns.  
  
'Ah... I think I was... mistaken. Leliana is in a different torture chamber. There are several of those in the castle now'.  
  
Her lips curl, ever so slightly; and for a second, Felix assumes that she detests being wrong - but as she speaks on, he changes his mind. It is not pride that has made the Enchanter grimace; it is outrage.  
  
'This has to be the place where they take those most outspoken about their belief in the Maker, or whatever other gods that are not this Elder One,' she explains, her voice so quiet that it almost drowns in her own heavy, lyrium-tainted breath.  
  
'To break them for sport'.  
  
And true enough, the next thing they hear from behind the wooden floor is a snarling command,  
  
'Your Maker is dead; admit it! Embrace the new master of this world, and he will grant you a quick and painless demise!'  
  
'Ne... ver!' the prisoner pants back.  
  
They are still on the second syllable when Dorian strides past Vivienne, staff crackling with energy and also targeting the door.  
  
'It doesn't matter who is in there!' he says, the tip of his staff now vanishing inside a red-hot orb of arcane charge. 'We cannot enjoy charming conversation while that poor wretch is being beaten! It's impolite!'  
  
He finishes the sentence with an emphatic staff twirl - and the ball of light, which has been swelling with pent-up energy during Dorian's entire little speech, rolls loose through the air, spitting sparkles along the way like a firework about to explode (except moving horizontally rather than vertically).   
  
The full blast of its fiery release blows the door into splinters, one of which sinks, dart-like, into the throat of the torturer - in Venatori garb like all other Corypheus' minions that they have encountered thus far, albeit wearing darker colours and with differently shaped, creaky leather gloves that are very broad at the elbow and dappled all over with soggy spots that can be little else but blood.   
  
As, stabbed by the splinter and finished off by a helpful lightning bolt from Vivienne, the torturer reels and then collapses to the floor, tossing up his arms in an arch of final agony, Felix catches a very good look of his gloves, down to the tiniest scrape and nick across the palm. And there are quite a lot of those peppering the leather surface, likely from wielding some of the torturer's  many-sized tools (massive dark tongs that seem to be covered in soot, and assorted blades with barbs like crocodile teeth, and sloppily polished corkscrews with bits of something sickeningly flesh-like still stuck in their grooves), which were laid out on the torturer's table and are now zooming chaotically all over the room, bounced by the spell's impact to the ceiling, from where they promptly come clattering down like monstrous metal rain.  
  
The torture tools, along with the other shards of magically shattered wood, may well have risked hitting the hazy human figure that hangs limply off a massive rack a few paces deeper into the room - but, by some sheer miracle, the Herald manages to jump in, channeling all of their strength into summoning a barrier over the rack, in what must be less than half a second, while the splinters are still mid-flight.  
  
After that is done - after the prisoner's limp silhouette sinks into a gold-specked, forest-green protective bubble, like they have been carried off from the murky, blood-drenched torture chamber into a safe sunlit clearing (do these even exist in this broken future? Felix fears they do not), the Herald falls back, exhausted. Their mouth, gaping and lopsided, lets out a sharp wheeze, like a broken piece of glass screeching against a blackboard, and their legs bend weakly in the knee.  
  
With an embarrassingly hen-like squawk of alarm (rather like the sounds he used to tease Father for, when his fretting over him was so much more innocent), Felix throws his arms forward to support the Herald before they completely sink to the floor. But, as it appears, he weighs much less than the imposing Qunari, so unlike the Herald themself, who, without fail, has always pulled him back up after every fit of wooziness, feigned or otherwise, he just fumbles about uselessly, flailing by their side like a moth trying to lift a stone statue.  
  
This... This comparison probably comes off as a jab at the Herald's physique, but Felix really does not feel this way. He feels... He feels... What he feels is immaterial, so long as they are stuck in a reality where the Herald is doomed to die from the red poison that is slowly glazing in their veins.  
  
While the two of them are tangled up in each other's limbs, figuring out how to stand up without toppling one another down again, Dorian and Vivienne magically propel themselves towards the rack to check on the prisoner, with a tail of pale blue smoke hanging in the air along their path before it melts away as vaporous breath on a frosty morning (a curious phenomenon Felix encountered when travelling south).   
  
By the time when, at long last, the Herald and Felix get gravity to work in their favour, Dorian and Vivienne have already helped the torturer's victim, who is still alive, get off the rack - and Felix blinks off the fog of yet another blush, which seems to inescapably overcome him when the Herald is closer than an arm's length to him, just in time to see who it is.


	5. Chapter 5

As she hobbles towards him and the Herald, leaning so heavily against Dorian and Vivienne that her feet scarcely touch the floor, let alone actually make steps on their own, Felix recognizes the victim of the Maker-defying torturer as that warrior woman who came to Redcliffe with the Herald. The Nevarran - the one who was so utterly appalled when the Mark travelled to his hand.  
  
He remembers her because of that distinct scar she had across her cheek. Which is still there, though paler, and almost lost underneath a slanting net of new long, mangled notches in her skin, some of which are still bleeding.  
  
The net apparently continues all the way down her body  - as far as Felix can tell from the jutting, ribbed tail ends of snaking whip lashes that range in colour all the way from grey to crimson, and peek out when the coarse, sloppy  burlap imitation of a shirt that the Nevarran is now wearing slips off her shoulder (among other heartrending markings of torture, it also exposes several sets of oval black-and-blue imprints, left by clawing, crushing fingers all along her throat).  
  
But even though she is now but a battered, broken husk of the glowering, sword-wielding woman that tried her best to protect the Herald from the Tevinter defilers - a thought that pounds, again and again, in a sickly pulse somewhere in Felix's innards - he remembers her. And she remembers him too, it seems.  
  
Felix can see it in her expression when she lifts her head, with the effort of an athlete rolling a leaden ball, and manages to focus her bloodshot, glazed-over eyes, one which has been reduced to a watering pink slit between two puffed-up skin folds (deep plum purple around the socket and then melting into a brownish-yellow lump that stretches down the entire right side of her face), long enough to meet his gaze.  
  
She makes several attempts to look ahead of her, in fact; the poor, longsuffering soul. But she only succeeds after Dorian and Vivienne stop walking and instead take to helping her find a foothold with her bending, cotton-wool legs: the former has released two healing wisps that cling to the Nevarran's limbs, melting into ghostly likenesses of supportive braces, while the latter hovers protectively by the poor woman's side, murmuring softly, 'Steady now, Cassandra darling. We are here for you'.  
  
But Cassandra (does Felix even have the right to refer to her as Cassandra, after all the agony she has suffered at the hands of his deranged countrymen?) does not make any indication that she is aware of either Dorian's magic, or Vivienne's gentle words of encouragement. Just like the Enchanter herself, when she first saw Felix standing in front of her cell, she scathes his uselessly apologetic, slightly sweating face with a livid glare, which burns harder and brighter and fiercer by the second, as the restorative aura does its work.   
  
The first thing Cassandra does, after the braces around her legs extend into an entire suit of see-through armour (rippling as if it were wrought from greenish bath bubbles), and the swirling healing light returns at least a portion of her strength to her, is to twist her mouth and, inhaling loudly and hoarsely with her malnourished stomach sucked in till it is flat against her spine, spit into Felix's face.  
  
Granted, what comes out of her mouth is hardly enough to as much as sprinkle Felix's skin (the poor woman must be severely dehydrated) - but it is the intent that counts. And Felix accepts that intent, hanging his head on his chest in quiet, resigned shame - and even wordlessly puts out his hand to stop any objections from Dorian, who lets go of the Nevarran and little short of rockets to the ceiling in affront.  
  
'You!' Cassandra rasps, with her sunken chest heaving and the protective bubbles bursting apart all around her. 'You took the Mark! You left us without Andraste's blessing! You slinked away like a weasel and let the world come to this! You... betrayed the Herald's trust!'  
  
She jerks her shoulder to eel out of Vivienne's grasp and makes a very determined gesture with her split-knuckled hands, as if aiming to roll up her shirt's nonexistent sleeves.  
  
'I don't care if you are a figment of my imagination; I will destroy you for what you did! For all the deaths you caused by running for a year! Maybe the Maker has granted me this final satisfaction before my time runs out!'  
  
Still bowing down, Felix does not budge, bracing for the punch. Neither Cassandra nor Vivienne, nor anyone else who has lived through almost four hundred days of inhuman suffering, is wrong to hate him. A split lip or a broken tooth is a tender, loving caress compared to their pain.  
  
But the blow never comes - stopped by the large, cuff-like hand of the Herald around Cassandra's wrist.  
  
'He did not mean to disappear. He, and the Mark too, were just whisked away by his father's magic - against his will. And now he wants to use the same magic to undo the past year! Preferably with no paste...'   
  
Felix shoots a glance at the Herald when they say that, and notices that they are also searching his gaze, with a small smile. As if waiting for his approval. His cheeks going warm again, Felix breathes out a noiseless laugh - and he can hear Dorian chuckle as well. The tension eases; Cassandra falters, her fingers unclenching - and Vivienne diplomatically rounds the confrontation up by saying,  
  
'Implausible, isn't it, my dear? But we are all living on borrowed time either way. What if  _this_ is the Maker's final satisfaction?'  
  
The Nevarran's scowl mellows.  
  
'It would be a true miracle if it was. I was never... fed red lyrium; the Seekers probably have higher tolerance to it, and the Venatori must have seen no point... But the damage from my injuries will catch up with me, sooner or later. And now that I am free, I would... relish a chance to go while trying to save the world'.  
  
'Now that's the Cassandra I know,' the Herald beams. 'Thank you for agreeing to come with us'.  
  
Dorian still looks unimpressed, but the prickly ice in his glare begins to melt when Cassandra twitches awkwardly on the spot and offers Felix a handshake.  
  
'If you truly bore no malice when you claimed the Mark - if you are but another victim of your father's madness - then I apologize'.   
  
'It's all right,' Felix responds sincerely, brushing against her fingers with utmost caution, lest she have any broken bones (that hand squeeze he gave the Herald in their cell was far beyond what was necessary).  
  
'Your wrath was entirely justified. The Mark does not belong to me; if I hadn't... drawn it to myself, you would all have stood a better chance against the Venatori. Who knows, maybe as we rewrite time, we will be able to return the Mark to the Herald'.  
  
Actually... It looks like they won't.  
  
As their team - now five people strong - continues scouring the ruined castle in search for Leliana, they start paying more attention to the ravaged side rooms, because some of them have overturned chests lying about inside. And where there are chests, there could be supply caches: more potions, maybe, and also something more substantial than half a sleeve torn off a dead Venatori to equip Cassandra with. It is in one of such rooms that they find a whole carpet of torn, slightly crumbled sheets, littering the floor so densely that they cannot see the stone. The paper appears yellow with age - at least the patches of it that are not powdered over with fine grey dust, which, whenever the sheets are kicked up, foliage-like, by careless feet, shoots up in tiny poofy geysers that scorch the inside of Felix and Dorian's noses and mouths and leave them reeling in a fit of coughing and sneezing (their delicate Tevinter constitution must appear so very pathetic in the eyes of Vivienne and the Herald, whose chests and lungs have been eaten through to bleeding point by something far deadlier than silly dust).  
  
Aside from the sneezes they cause, their little group does not pay the papers on the floor much heed - until Dorian, who is making a beeline for a looming wardrobe on the other end of the side room, makes too broad a step and stumbles, yelping in surprise, when one sheet slides from underneath his heel.  
  
'And that's why you shouldn't harvest red lyrium from cleaning staff,' he mutters, dusting himself off and eyeing the paper carpet. Then, abruptly, he gulps down whatever else he was trying to say and, taking a step back, hits the floor with a ball of telekinetic energy, which splits upon landing like a paper bag filled with water and tossed out of a top-storey window (not that Felix would... know anything about pranks like those) and washes most of the sheets in intangible, yet visibly fluid green glow.  
  
Casting a lace veil of reflected light into the walls, the flow of magic rises, again, like tidal water would, bringing the paper sheets up to eye level. Soon, there are dozens of them hanging in mid-air around the room, forming circles upon circles that expand from the room's centre, rustling as if they speak in a mournful whisper, and sparkling green around the edges.  
  
And Dorian - Dorian spins in the midst of it all, passing his suddenly quaking fingertips over the sheets nearest to him, flipping them aside when he is finished (with his brow tightly knitted and his pupils like inky dots),  and reading, reading, reading what is scrawled across, in a jerking, unsteady hand, with quite a few of the word endings spreading into crinkly grey blotches, shaped like tiny chubby jellyfish.  
  
At first, Felix merely observes Dorian, quite concerned about the flashes of pain that crack, lightning-like, through his focused countenance - but the moment he decides to see for himself what Dorian is reading, the spinning motion sweeps him off as well, and the entire world shatters and falls away, and nothing remains but the words on dusty, splattered paper. Words in Father's handwriting.  
  
'Nothing works,' reads the snatch of text on the sheet that floats into Felix's field of view first, underlined in several wobbly streaks.  
  
'Nothing works. The Breach is like a solid, unshakable dam, blocking the current of time that I attempt to surf. And the Mark, and whoever bears it, is like a brick from that dam, just as solid. The mistake at the Conclave cannot be undone - nor can the second, graver mistake that I made in Redcliffe. This blasted Fade-touched scar has imprinted itself on Felix. Permanently'.  
  
So... He is the one who has to close Rifts now? The one who has to fight demons and shelter the people they prey on? Well, he is off to such a bloody excellent start! Barely branded by the Mark, and he is already bumbling his way through chaos of his countrymen's making! He will make an awful Herald; a Herald that deserves all the punches.  
  
'No,' Felix whispers through quivering lips, his feet teetering over an unseen void. 'I can't... I am not worthy... I never wanted this...'  
  
And the next paper scrap that appears before him bears these very same words, the dashes of ink lacerating it like claw marks.  
  
'I never wanted this. I never wanted the world to fall apart; I never wanted Tevinter's bright new future to dawn amid screams and rivers of blood. All I wanted was my boy back - and I did get him back in a way, didn't I? He no longer has the Blight; but whatever it is I did, whatever wild magic I triggered, he now has a target on him. I cannot stall my "research" forever, and sooner or later, the Elder One will realize that his enemy, his hated thief, is none other than my son. He will keep pushing me to perfect my time magic, so that I can either locate Felix in whatever era I sent him and Dorian to, and... remove him; or push past the Breach and prevent his birth entirely. And I can't help but wonder if the latter would be a mercy. Better not be born at all than be born to a father who could not protect him; who did not do enough to keep him away from harm; who failed him, again and again, and covered each failure up with an even bigger failure. No, no; what an I rambling?! How could I say this?! This is unthinkable! Me being... me has nothing to do with Felix and his worth... And yet... If I had never been part of his life, he would have been so much happier. If, in theory, I could surmount the constrains of time magic, I would have gone some thirty years back, and pushed Livia towards that other fellow who courted her. In his family, she would never have had to deal with an infanticidal father-in-law; she would never have had to die, trampled up by a swarm of darkspawn while her husband was too busy in Minrathous. And Felix, with a different father, would never have had to watch him turn into a monster'.  
  
Felix swallows, but his throat does not clear; his vision dims, as though he were being smothered by an invisible giant hand plastered over his face, thick and heavy and moist, with the iron-hard thumb pressing into his jugular. And even after he shakes the sensation off, briefly, it returns again the moment he sets eyes on the next suspended sheet.  
  
'Felix, my precious boy, I love you so much. I have always loved you. Ever since Livia told me the news, ever since I knew there was going to be a Felix, I have loved you. More than anything. I have given the world for you; I have stood by and watched it burn, adding some dark magic of my own to fuel the flames - but I know that, should you appear before me right now and should I lay the embers at your feet, you would scorn me. You would turn away like I was a stranger. I have seen it far too many times in my nightmares; and with the Veil so tangled, and my mind ready to slip, once or twice I could have sworn that it was real. That you were real. And you know... I would have gladly let the nightmare come true if that meant seeing you again. But I can't. Because the moment you show yourself here, the Elder One will have you killed. And it will be because of me. Because of my love - which, for all its strength, did nothing to save you. I am sorry, Felix'.  
  
He scarcely registers tearing away from the sheet, in its burning, hazy green frame, his father's face clear as day before his eyes, worn with exhaustion to a skeletal mask, eyes fixed on him among deep lines like cracks in arid earth. The vision poofs away when Felix bumps against Dorian, whose impeccable kohl has begun to streak. He has grabbed hold of one of the hovering sheets and pulled it off its orbit closer to his chest; this sheet has only two words written on it,  
  
'He knows'.  
  
And then, a giant black pool of spilled ink.


	6. Chapter 6

Felix could have stood there for all eternity, gaping at that paper scrap till his racing mind turned the ink blot into a splash of blood. Dark, tainted, Blighted blood.  
  
He could have stood there for all eternity, trying to make sense of the tumult of questions at the back of his head (which strike at his skull like a multitude of pickaxes chipping away the bone).  
  
Is this... Is this Father's last entry? It has to be: almost every sheet has a date dashed down in the upper right corner, with a hasty, uncharacteristic sloppiness that makes Felix imagine his father tracing those numbers and month named out of sheer force of instinct. And the sequence ends many, many weeks before Harvestmere.  
  
So... If this is where his journal was cut off, what has Father been doing since? For all this time?   
  
If he was hiding from the Elder One, lying to him, disillusioned in him, why is he giving the Venatori orders all of a sudden?  
  
What if he isn't?  
  
What if he's long dead, and the Herald and their companions are simply unaware of this, having been imprisoned?  
  
If he is... gone, what happened to his research? To the key to dispelling this bloody nightmare?  
  
And more importantly... Felix was too hasty to condemn him, wasn't he? Even if it was far too late, Father did see reason in the end... Does this mean he died hating himself, trapped in a burning prison of his own making - and all alone? Without a son by his side to tell him it that was going to be all right, that this broken world may yet be fixed?  
  
Felix could have stood there for all eternity, aching, wondering, almost feeling his father's hand in his, his arm pressing at his shoulder as he wants to lean on Felix for once, instead of carrying him like s burden heavier than the whole world... But he has to jolt awake when Dorian taps his forearm, pointing towards the room's door and then rolling his eyes to indicate that Felix has to move to the side.   
  
Just like he did when the two of them snuck out of the house past curfew to try and find, and gawk at, the forbidden artifact salesman that was rumoured to ride into town, on a drooling dracolisk as black as night, once every full moon. But, of course, without the gleeful smirk he had back then, and with his gaze darkened.   
  
Felix obeys, stepping closer to the wall, as do the Herald, Vivienne, and Cassandra, while Dorian extinguishes his telekinetic charge, making the paper sheets circle back down to the floor like those 'snowflakes' that flit through the air in southern winter.  
  
When everyone is tucked away, out of view of whoever might pass by the open door - and they will pass by, any moment now; Felix can hear voices approaching down the corridor - Dorian jumps to the side himself, with a rather exaggerated pirouette, and, placing his hand palm forward, concentrates intensely for a couple of seconds, until the doorway fills up with a translucent, seemingly bouncy mass, light-brown like watered-down tea. It wobbles in place, a stripe of iridescence travelling through it, up and down; then, for a fleeting moment, it solidifies into a wooden texture; and finally vanishes.  
  
'Oh, I see,' Vivienne mouths, craning her neck (which, just like her leg, is covered in thick, crystal-encrusted veins).  
  
'You have cast an illusion of a door so that we might gain information from the Venatori while giving them a false sense of privacy. I... long ago, I heard of Circles where the Templars would ask senior enchanters to play this trick on apprentices in their dorms. An abuse that I was hoping to rectify... if only...'  
  
Her whisper fades, and the shadow of her lowered eyelashes flutters on her emaciated cheeks.  
  
'You still will,' Felix tells her hoarsely: out of a compulsion to reassure her more than anything, for his trust in Dorian's plan has all but dwindled. In order to work, it needs Father to be alive and in possession of his amulet - and if the Elder One took him... If... If he...  
  
Dorian gives a lingering look to both Felix and Vivienne - and presses a finger to his lips.  
  
The voices are close now. And so are their owners.  
  
They can see them quite clearly through the illusion-touched doorway. Two people - at a guess, a man and a woman - in Venatori garb, walking with a busy brusqueness and absorbed in conversation.   
  
The man is shorter and portlier than the woman (how did he even manage to preserve all this chub in a world where crops must long have been burned down by invading demons?). He appears slightly out of breath and keeps reaching up with his puffy hands to scratch under the chin of his mask - which he eventually yanks off, baring a ruddy, sweating face that almost uncannily resembles a caricature of a 'dog-smelling Fereldan peasant', of the kind Felix has seen a-plenty in illustrated Otlesian journals.   
  
So... A local, then; someone who reasoned that defecting to the Venatori gave him (and perhaps his family) a better chance of survival.  
  
When he speaks, too, it is with a very thick rural southern accent that makes his Common almost impossible to understand for Felix (who learned the prescribed, classical version, which he blended with Tevene at home and Orlesian at university).  
  
'Gives you a lot to think about, don't it?' the Fereldan muses, rubbing at the red stripe left by the mask under his chin. 'If you cross the Elder One...'  
  
'You forgot to say "Praise be", the woman reprimands him sternly (by contrast with the man, her pronunciation and tone is very much Tevene).  
  
'Yeah, right...' the Fereldan grunts. 'If you cross the Elder One - Praise be! - he will up and infect you with the Blight, and control your thoughts, and then you ain't even gonna have whatcha call it... free will to cross the Elder One... Praise be'.  
  
'The Elder One can control the Blight?' Dorian whispers incredulously. 'I thought he was just a magister with an overblown ego'.  
  
'They do harp a lot about him ascending to godhood,' the Herald reminds him of their conversation in their cell; then, everyone falls silent, for the Venatori keep on talking.  
  
'Don't get your hopes up,' says the woman, shoving her companion, not too forcefully, in his broad back.   
  
'You know that the Elder One - praise be - only did that to Alexius because that time magic of his might still be useful. You know, for finding his son... the boy who took the Fade Anchor. Plebeians like you and I, we will just get killed. No second chances'.  
  
Feeling as if he had been dipped up to the chin into a broiling kitchen pot, Felix has to grope around the doorway to find some manner of support.  
  
They are... They are talking about Father? They are talking about Father. They are talking about Father!  
  
So that's why he is still here; that's why he is among the Venaori; that's why he stopped writing his journal. He is the Elder One's pawn now, more than he ever was. Completely; inescapably; to the very marrow of his bone. Driven not by his heart - which, despite all the terrible mistakes he would make later, had started out pure - but by the vile tar-like ooze that has replaced his blood; by the nagging song that is apparently controlled by his tyrannical pretend deity.  
  
The rational part of Felix's mind is very, very displeased with his feral urge to dart out into the corridor and scream, no, wail for his father like an abandoned cub. But that part is small and squishy like a snail out of its shell - and the Fereldan's next words completely trample it down, as they echo what Felix himself said to Dorian in the Redcliffe Chantry, not knowing that he was uttering a dark, ominous prophecy.  
  
'Huh, well, you know I kind of like stayin' alive... But if you ask me, a quick death beats having those gross skin bits from test subjects stuck to you... To make sure you are healthy enough to function, but Blighted enough to be bound to the Elder One... Praise be'.  
  
Yes. Just like what Felix said. There are worse things than dying. This - this is worse than dying.  
  
'No... No, no, no!' Felix hears someone cry out - someone who is apparently himself, staggering right through the ghostly, intangible door and breaking the illusion.   
  
'You can't be doing this! To him - and to all these poor people?! I want to... See for myself!'  
  
'Oi, who do you think you are?!' the Fereldan blubbers, hoisting up a spear much like the one that Felix is evidently waving about blindly, and aiming at his chest.  
  
'His hand!' the Tevinter gasps, as she, in turn, reaches for a pair of daggers. 'It's glowing green! It's him! It's the Anchor thief! Let's kill him ourselves, Alexius be damned, and take the hand to the Elder One!'  
  
'Praise be!' the Fereldan concludes with a hearty bellow - and lunges his spear forth in a puncturing strike... Which is stopped by something similar-looking, something attached to the hand that Felix numbly watches move in front of him, fingers clasped around the shaft, first white with tension and then, suddenly, painted a glossy red by a little river that courses down the weapon's edge.   
  
And the wellspring of that river is... The upper body of the Fereldan, who has folded up like a sack of flour before Felix, no longer huffing breathlessly, no longer scratching at his reddened skin, no longer blurting out praise to his self-proclaimed god. No longer even appearing fully human - not with those sieve-like wounds that perforate his puffy chest, inflicted by the spear that Felix can barely feel within his grasp. Just as he can barely hear the far-off flashes of blue and purple and steely grey, or hear the crackle and thunder of storm magic that his mage companions sling in the face of the Tevinter Venatori, while the Nevarran warrior raises her freshly-looted blade over her... Or over a jittery silhouette that resembles her, at least.  
  
The bones in his legs turning to water, all air escaping his burning lungs with a faint whistle, Felix lets go of his spear (which, despite very audibly clanking down to the floor, still leaves a kind of lingering phantom imprint in his hand that he cannot quite shake off) and kneels next to the Fereldan. While his hands, again, are completely out of his control, moving in their own mystical plane of existence, fumbling stupidly to check for a pulse. Which, if course, he does not find.  
  
He does not find anything, except more blood, and limp flesh, which seems to drain of warmth under his touch, as if he were an entropy spell-caster, and... And a large, chunky locket, wrought clumsily from cheap metal, and hanging on a frayed cord rather than on a chain. One of the spear strikes - Felix's spear strikes! - has clearly damaged the fastenings that once kept the locket shut, and it now gapes shut like a cracked shell.   
  
Peeking from within, almost untouched by the messy, sickening splatter of crimson, there is a portrait, done in murky, poorly mixed oil paint in diligent, but not too skilled brush strokes of a self-taught village artist. It shows a group of four: the Fereldan himself, sporting a bushy, caterpillar-like moustache and clasping a pipe between his exaggeratedly smiling teeth; a woman about his age, apple-cheeked like him, who rests her head in a massive white cap on his shoulder and has placed her hand on the curve of her pregnant body; a teenage boy, with what might be the inklings of a moustache of his own, or the artist's attempt to add a shadow around his lips; and a tiny girl, all covered in gigantic freckles (a bit like one of the mage children that Felix befriended) and surrounded by a copper-shaded cloud that must symbolize her hair.  
  
So Felix was right - when he made his first guess as to why this southerner defected to Corypheus. He... He had a family. Loved ones that he always carried with him. And then Felix came along and, without even thinking straight... He... He...  
  
'You were in shock,' the Herald booms in their gentle giant's voice, as they scruff him like a kitten and (for the... he has lost count... let's call it nth time) lift him from the floor.   
  
'And you were just trying to defend yourself, too! And if you and Dorian pull off this time reversal thing, none of this will ever have happened. You will never have had to spill blood. And this fellow will never have had to join the Venatori at all!'  
  
'It all hinges on you keeping your wits about you, darling,' Vivienne reminds him - again. 'You have been losing control far too often'.  
  
He has, hasn't he? Is it a family trait? Was his... brutally toward the poor southerner truly any different from Father's outburst in the face of the Inquisition? If anything... It was probably worse.  
  
Felix flaps his gums dumbly, gulping for the proper words to ask forgiveness... But is spared by the piercing scream that lashes across the corridor, from the end of it where the two Venatori were coming from.  
  
'Maker,' Cassandra whispers, tracing the triangular shape of Andraste's pyre over her heart with stiffened fingers.  
  
'That's Leliana'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Felix: he still has to close some Rifts in the castle courtyard and face down ghoul!Alexius, who, upon being slain, will also turn into an Arcane Horror because of the havoc wrought to the Veil. I am not sure when I will get to that, so I am giving away the spoiler just in case.


End file.
